Now, that Laura Cox has called for Dana Nessel to investigate Detroit and its child welfare issues, because preterm births and infant mortality is more than just a grant, it seems we are also looking into election fraud.
The Michigan GOP has its own grant funding issues, but hey, what do I know?
I know we should ask Mikey!
Everyone loves Mikey.
Mikey is Laura Cox's husband, the former Michigan Attorney General.
Mikey can tell his story and Kwame Kilpatrick can tell his story.
Mikey and Kwame used to be buddies, but hey, what do I know?
I know there used to be chatter on the streets that Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick once said, "It is always good to have an AG in your backpocket."
I heard the rumors about the Manoogian Mansion party that did not happen the next morning and the tales were tall!
Republican Party chair calls on AG's office to probe Detroit grants office
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| Laura Cox |
Laura Cox, in a released statement, noted allegations revealed in a Thursday lawsuit involving the city's Office of Development and Grants and Ryan Friedrichs, the office's chief development officer, who also is the husband of Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
“The allegations leveled against Ryan Friedrichs and the Detroit Office of Development and Grants are extremely troubling and warrant a full investigation by the Michigan Attorney General’s office,” Cox said in a released statement.
In a whistleblower lawsuit filed Thursday in Wayne County Circuit Court, ex-Detroit employee Kennedy Shannon contends she placed on administrative leave and ultimately terminated after raising concern over the city's Motor City Match program, a federally funded effort designed to aid small businesses.
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| Jocelyn Benson & Ryan Friedrichs |
The state's review comes amid a probe launched in April by Detroit Inspector General Ellen Ha to determine whether Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, also a Democrat, and city officials potentially "abused their authority" by providing preferential treatment to the program run by Wayne State University. The investigation was sparked by a Detroit Free Press report that Make Your Date received $358,000 in city grants and benefited from a fundraising campaign that a city official led at the mayor’s request.
"Emails were deleted and employees were fired. The Attorney General’s office must get to the bottom of the allegations involving the Motor City Match Program, the city’s involvement with Make Your Date, and the attempt by the Detroit Office of Development and Grants to delete emails sought through correct legal recourse," Cox said. "Will the Attorney General’s office do their duty or will Attorney General Nessel’s friendship with Jocelyn Benson allow this potential cover-up to avoid scrutiny?”
In response, Nessel spokeswoman, Kelly Rossman-McKinney, said the office is actively reviewing the complaints it received involving deleted emails.
"Friendship or not, no one is above the law," she said.
Secretary of State spokesman Shawn Starkey also responded to Cox's comments, saying: “This is nothing more than the shamelessly opportunistic ramblings of a political hack.”
Shannon's lawsuit contends that she informed Katerli Bounds, the city's director of grants, and Friedrichs that there were "major compliance and HUD regulation issues" with the match program and that the city "should not make any more payments to this organization."
The lawsuit contends that she was told by Bounds that refusing to sign off on packets for the match program was "insubordination" and could result in termination.
In response, the city provided The Detroit News with a copy of a March email from Friedrichs sent to Bounds and Shannon following the meeting.
The email noted "takeaways" arrived at from the discussion, including that "staff members are supported in their ability to make a final decision on their sign-off on a packet."
Shannon was suspended for 30 days without pay on May 1. She was terminated May 23.
Duggan spokesman John Roach told The News on Tuesday that the city "strongly believes" the allegations in Shannon's lawsuit are false and "we are vigorously contesting that case in court."
"Injecting partisan politics into this matter isn't going to contribute to resolving the legal issues," he said.
Detroit Corporation Counsel Lawrence Garcia has claimed Shannon's dismissal was tied to concerns involving her time cards. Her concerns about the match program, he said, were "welcomed" and used to improve the system.
With respect to the emails, Garcia has said that Friedrichs and Detroit's Chief Financial Officer David Massaron learned of the "possibility of deleted or missing emails" in May and moved quickly to resurrect them and turn them over to the inspector general.
Garcia has declined to provide further details, citing Ha's ongoing investigation.
Shannon, in the filing, said she also flagged Detroit's inspector general about concerns involving Motor City Match and others tied to the Make Your Date.
On Tuesday, Shannon said Friedrichs and other city staff should welcome the review.
"If Ryan and his office haven't done anything wrong and they are of the highest integrity as they claim, then they should welcome this investigation and the result of the OIG investigation as well," she said.
Background on Detroit's grant team.
Detroit's grants team grows, pulls dollars into city
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| Motor City Match Public Relations Slush Fund |
That's a record fundraising contingent for the city and among the largest dedicated municipal fundraising efforts nationally, said Detroit's Chief Development Officer Ryan Friedrichs.
The goal? Capitalizing on rising interest nationally in the city's comeback. And there's evidence it is succeeding in bringing in outside money rather than just the usual local philanthropic stalwarts in a city that in the past had trouble actually spending the dollars it did get.
Last year, programs and initiatives in Detroit attracted over $202 million in public grants and private investment, according to the city.
Grants and low-interest loans from private foundations and companies totaled $67.4 million, with more than two-thirds of that coming from out-of-state funders.
"The goals are now bigger and bolder," Friedrichs said.
The city is going to pursue funding from even more sources, foundations that have not been in Detroit before, to fund efforts like the $250 million Affordable Housing Leverage Fund.
Ryan Friedrichs: Began as a one-man fundraising team.
"We are lucky we have a lot of foundations here ... but we also have a lot of need," Friedrichs said.
"What we're trying to do is bring that new funding to the city and not just compete locally, to cut the local philanthropic pie more, but to try to grow it."
Because of the revitalization happening in the city, it's become a magnet for investment from outside of Detroit, said Jim Ferris, director of the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California.
Detroit is not the only city pursuing public and private grants and investment, he said. But "Detroit has put a lot of effort into it, and it's been a success."
Detroit has a spotty history on coordinating grant-seeking.
Detroit had an office of the foundation liaison staffed by David Smydra, during Mayor Dennis Archer's 1994-2001 term, but that office didn't operate during the Dave Bing and Kwame Kilpatrick administrations. And city departments were applying for grants independently of one another in the years before the bankruptcy.
To help strengthen and coordinate its fundraising muscle, the Ford, Kresge and Skillman foundations made a $1.1 million grant to the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan in 2014 to support an assessment of what each city department was doing in regards to grants and to create a framework to coordinate it, Friedrichs said.
That led to the creation of grants management and development offices in late 2014 and early 2015. Both city offices were created as part of the city's bankruptcy plan, Friedrichs said. Grants management monitored grant compliance and spending, making sure dollars were spent on time, something the city struggled with before its bankruptcy.
Friedrichs came on board in 2015, serving as a one-man fundraising team for a time until the city began ramping up its development staff the following year.
This January the city merged the grants management and development offices to gain efficiencies from their related focus. The merged office now employs 20 and is in the process of hiring three more development employees: two to seek traditional funding from public and private funders and one specializing in loan and investment capital.
It will operate on a $3.1 million budget in the coming fiscal year, down from a combined budget of $3.8 million for the two offices this year, Friedrichs said, as a result of efficiencies such as shared administrative assistants, elimination of vacant grants management positions and collecting data for grant application and reporting one time and keeping it in a single system.
"We view the city's capacity to raise philanthropic grants and to fully expend and maximize federal dollars as a critical capability to enable Detroit's recovery," said Skillman CEO Tonya Allen.
"We are inspired by the growth in revenues materialized by this office, which we believe will improve living conditions for Detroit residents."
Increasing trust, confidence and credibility in the city "will help leverage additional and much-needed public, private and charitable investments to fuel Detroit's trajectory," she said.
Part of the strategy that Friedrichs' team has helped institute is keeping a reserve of city match money that can leverage private money, he said. It's also looking for opportunities where private investment can leverage federal dollars.
It's only been a couple of years, but the development and grant teams' efforts are paying off.
In 2017, the city and third-party groups like the Detroit Employment Service Corps attracted $202.18 million in public and private funds, up from $155.7 million the year before, Friedrichs said. The city operated on a $1.91 billion budget in 2017.
The total raised includes a mixture of grants and low-interest loans to support projects that are administered by community organizations.
They include: Grow Detroit's Young Talent program, which is run by the Detroit Employment Solutions Corp; Motor City Match and Motor City Re-Store, which are run by the Detroit Economic Growth Corp.; and the Entrepreneurs of Color Fund, run by the Detroit Development Fund.
"The goal of our team is not to just support more funds going into city coffers, but to help Detroit compete nationally for resources that improve the lives of Detroiters," Friedrichs said. "And that can mean partnering departments with community organizations via a memorandum of understanding."
Within the total, public support rose $18.1 million between 2016 and 2017. Private support from foundations and companies rose to $67.4 million last year from $39 million in 2016.
Funding from Michigan foundations and companies was fairly static last year, decreasing to $26.62 million from $26.78 million the year before.
Out-of-state funders provided over 60 percent of the total private support coming to the city last year, up from 31. 5 percent in 2016.
Looking forward
Investment is pouring into Detroit to support its rebound, but how will the city sustain those programs when grant and loan dollars run out?
"Philanthropy has really not pulled out of any programs we asked them to support. ... It's really the other direction. They've kind of come in with more support," Friedrichs said.
The city is budgeting to take on $2 million of the $10.2 million cost of Grow Detroit's Young Talent in the coming fiscal year.
The key to sustaining efforts supported through short- and midterm grants and investments is braided funding that combines federal grants and city funds, Friedrichs said.
"Grant funding from foundations is never going to be long-term."
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